Release Me
by Warui-Usagi
Summary: A collection of different moments in Juliette and Warner's rather complicated relationship. Chapter 2: "What?" The word hisses out from in-between his teeth like the bite of a whip against my skin. "You think that's why I did it? Why I saved you? To hold it over your head like some sort of sick victory?"
1. Broken

**Release Me:****  
Broken**

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x x x

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'_I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it.'_

_**~Winston Churchill**_

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x x x

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Warner looks at me like I might break.

"Are you sure you should get up?" I hear him saying, whispering almost, like the fact that I just survived a gunshot wound to the chest is the biggest secret in the world. "I think you should be resting."

"Here?" I reply, and something about this moment and the way he's looking at me makes me think that my voice really is too loud. "You're kidding, right?" I force my legs to move, my arms to move, even though they're made of cement and exhaustion and ice. Because I know I'm right—I know we I can't stay here. Anderson needs to think I'm still bleeding out, well and truly _dead_, staining his living room floor.

Sitting up is dragging a bag of rocks across the sheets until my arms, legs and head are throbbing and aching with the effort of it. I force myself closer to the edge of the bed, testing the strength in my fingers. If I can just make it to the bathroom…

Warner's just standing and standing and staring and staring at me—and I don't even remember how he came to be on the other side of the room. My head is ringing with the sound of bullets and blood and Warner's screams and all of a sudden, I've forgotten how to move.

"Thank you," I mumble, my throat full of cotton.

"For what?" Still so quiet.

"For saving my life." I can feel my lips forming the words, but no sound comes out and I realize, very acutely, that my heartbeat has cut off my voice box.

Warner says nothing and I feel rather than see him move closer. I want to look at him—to read his expression, his eyes, his lips, to know what he thinks of me, but I'm such, such, _such_ a coward, terrified of what I might see in his face.

I can see the black fabric of slacks almost touching my knees.

"Juliette." His warm breath is stirring my hair and the cement in my limbs has hardened, turned rock solid and I can't move, can't move, _can't move._

Adam and Kenji are out there, fighting, fighting, _fighting _for me and I won't even fight for myself.

I see his arm, his hand, reaching for my face, lift it so he can see me, but I can't see him. Everything's blurring, mixing together the splotches of colours until nothing makes sense. There's a ripping sound and I think I've forgotten how to breathe again.

"Don't cry, love. We'll figure something out," I hear him say and all I can think is _I'm not crying I'm not crying why does he think I'm crying_? And then I feel something cold splatter on my hands and I look down and I'm horrified, horrified, _horrified_ because I _am _crying and I'm crying all over _Warner's _hands which he's resting on mine and now I can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop…

Kenji, Adam, Castle, The Reestablishment, Anderson, Warner. So many people fighting over for so many different things and I wish I could be stronger right now, because I know I should be fighting too.

But I'm not.

I'm useless.

I feel so weak and even though my body can't move I'm falling forward until I collapse against firmness and warmth and the ripping sound is louder now, in my ears and I don't understand what's happening to me.

My body is shattered.

Bands of steel tighten around my back and arms, trying to hold me together and the bed disappears from underneath me.

"Sara! Sonya!" The words reverberate through my chest and I want to turn and see, see why I can _feel _Warner's voice, feel the anxiety, the strength, but my body can't, won't move. I hear the clamour, hear the urgency as they come running. In a bizarre moment of clarity I wonder at how I'd forgotten they were here.

"What's wrong?" It's Sara speaking and she sounds sleepy.

"She just…she isn't—I don't—" a deep breath, "She seemed okay, exhausted, but okay and then she just—"

I'm falling to pieces, I want to tell them. I'm breaking, cracking, falling and I can't make it stop. Please make it stop.

"She's just overloaded, I think," I hear Sara say, much closer now. "Do you know if she's in any pain?"

"N-no. I don't know. She didn't say anything about pain. Juliette?" I can feel his voice, his words brushing my cheek, as soft as a caress. "Does it hurt anywhere?"

I force my eyelids back, force my eyes to take in the harsh light above my head—blink, blink, blink— trying to make out where I am, but all the colours refuse to paint a picture that makes sense to me, that I can process and hard as I try to find it, my voice remains lost.

"I have an idea," Sonya is speaking from further away, moving closer. "Where is the closest bathroom here?"

"There's an ensuite in my room," Warner says immediately. "Follow me."

It's alright I want to tell them. I'm just screwed up, like the rest of this God-forsaken world, this planet, everything I try to do is just wrong, broken, always stupid even when I think it feels right and—

There's a strange rumbling sound in my head; I feel a flash of heat against my skin and cringe away.

"The hot water and salts should calm her down," one of the twins is speaking over the roar in my ears—I can't tell who. "She's been through an awful lot in the last 48 hours. Her system is probably having difficulty coping."

It's quiet then, and I can feel my body warming, feel the nightgown they had me in sticking to my skin. It was uncomfortable. Suffocating. The girls were probably right.

I really am going insane.

"Alright," Sara whispers. "Put her in. She should feel better after this. We can sit with her while—"

Fear gripes me, a sudden cold hand squeezing around my throat. Too much. The warm damp air was making it more difficult to breathe. It all felt unwelcome and intrusive. Please get me out of here, I wanted to say. Please, please, please. I don't like it.

Don't make me do something I'll regret.

I groaned and tried to move away, but I was drained—a dead weight. Nothing. My toes skimmed something wet, warm and panic clawed at my chest, burning.

No.

More.

Flames flew down through my arms, fuelled by my terror, my need to survive, to defend. It was wrenching my eyes open against the searing harshness of the lights on my face and throwing my arms up into the air, clawing and grabbing at whatever I could to get away from it. I just wanted it all to stop.

"_**No**_!"

"Juliette! Shit—NO! Stay away from me you two! If she grabs you—Argh! Juliette! You're okay! You'll be okay!"

"No, no, no, no, no…" All I can say, all I can think is please, please, please, please don't make me go in there. Please…

My feet drag through the water and I gasp as the heat grips my skin, snaking its way upward, through my legs and into my stomach and suddenly, everything comes sharply into focus. My arms are like a vice around Warner's neck and I'm already half-in a bathtub full of hot water, the blood seeping out of my nightgown.

"Juliette!" And just as I realize what's happening and let go it's too late —Warner's falling into me and I'm falling into the water. Fear — plain, unadulterated and fleeting — grips me as I'm shoved and held under water by the weight of Warner's body and _oh I've forgotten how to hold my breath_ and I'm drawing water into my lungs before Warner's weight is gone and he's heaving me out of the water by my ruined clothes coughing and splattering for oxygen.

"Juliette? God, are you _okay_?" I can't answer him. I'm still coughing, retching, gulping and he steadies me with an arm around my waist.

"Jesus," he hisses when my coughing subsides, breathing more normal. "You just took ten years off my life. What was that about?"

"Is she okay?" A voice calls from the other side of the door — Warner must have closed it before.

"I think so," he calls back, emerald eyes darting back and forth across my face.

"What—" I croak, and then cough when the effort of speaking triggers another spasm in my chest. "Where am I?"

"In my bathtub," Warner replies immediately, the expression on his face makes him look like he's amused, but there's a tightness around his mouth, a rigidity to his whole body that I don't understand. He's looking at me, just looking and looking and hundreds of stories are flitting across his face — my head and heart _hurt_ trying to follow and comprehend each one — before it settles somewhere between terror and bewilderment.

It takes me 2 seconds to process this.

3

4

5

6 to realize just how close we are, noses almost touching, his warm breath tickling my cheek and stirring my damp hair.

7

8

9

10 for me to see the worry, the hurt, the fear right there in his eyes, accusing me of so much and I'm grasping, reaching, searching for the words — the nouns, verbs, adjectives, _anything _to make him stop looking at me like I'd just tried to kill him several times and almost succeeded.

11

12 to know that the reason I couldn't come up with anything to say was because that's exactly what I'd done to him.

'…_You destroy me.'_

13

14

15

16 to know I needed to apologize — that I _wanted _to apologize. _Anything_ to make him stop looking at me like that.

17

18 For him to blink—blink, blink, blink—and my body screamed to touch him.

19

20 seconds of silence to know if one of us didn't move soon, I couldn't trust myself with what I might do. My heart was beating uneasily, like it didn't trust me either.

21

22

23

24 to know I wasn't going to be the one to move.

25

26 before I felt Warner's hands at the base of my skull, lightly massaging the tension from my muscles until I relax.

27

28 for him to pull me in, watching my face so carefully and push his lips to my forehead.

29 "I'm so happy you're okay." And his voice is like warm honey dripping down my eyelids. My heart is trapped, racing, desperately trying to fly to him but it can't.

30 And then he's moving, gathering his legs underneath himself and moving away and leaving. Leaving. _Leaving._

31

32 My arms reach for him without my permission.

33 He pretends not to notice.

34

35 He's reaching for a towel, not looking at me, not looking at me and my head turns to follow him, to _will _him to look at me.

36. "Stay in here for a while. The twins think the hot water might do you some good."

So

Much

Pain

He stops with his hand on the door and this is my chance, I think, to stop him. To ask him to stay. He wants me to stop him. Or maybe he doesn't, because that hand is shaking and his jaw is clenched like he's angry. But I have to tell him. Tell him that there is definitely, certainly, _obviously_ a part of me that wants him. It wants him so much it hurts. Burns.

37 _'…Please don't shoot me for this.'_

38

39 I say nothing. My heart is in my throat, screeching to get out. To explode in his hands. Instead I say only, "Okay."

40 He's opening the door and leaving — _so fast so fast, no, no, no — _and the girls come in, gloves on, and start peppering me with questions.

41

42 "Are you cold?" Sara asks, patting me on the head.

43

44

45 Before I realize how hard I'm shivering and that's why she thinks I'm cold and suddenly I'm miserable because and I can't tell her that my shivering has nothing to do with the temperature of the water.

46

47 And they're re-running the water—hotter this time, and washing my hair and ripping me free of my soiled nightgown.

48

49

50 and I want to disappear beneath the water and dissolve just like salt or sugar and stay invisible. But I don't.

Wrapped in a thick towel the girls escort me back to Warner's room — of course he's nowhere to be seen — and they help me get dressed and I'm so exhausted, I think as I slip down onto the pillow, I just want the sweet oblivion of sleep to take me. Too tired to cry. Too tired to feel anything. I am nothing but chaos, and chaos is never anything but heart-shatteringly painful to everything and everyone in comes into contact with.

"_I'm so desperately in love with you…"_

I should have stayed dead when Anderson shot me.


	2. Ruin

**Release Me: Chapter 2**

**Ruin**

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x x x

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"…_I wish you'd stop expecting me to use my power to kill people."_

_He shrugs. "I never said you had to. But it will happen along the way; it's an inevitability in war. Killing is statistically impossible to avoid."_

_**~Juliette and Warner, Unravel Me**_

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x x x

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I can feel his eyes on the back of my head.

"I know you want this to end well. All happily-ever-after for all freaks of nature sort of thing. But it's not going to happen with this plan. No," he continues in his whisper soft voice, and I collapse on the couch in frustration, "you will definitely get yourself killed. I've already had to watch you almost die. I realise it's horribly selfish of me love, but please don't make me go through that again. Especially if it's easily avoidable."

"Well, I'm open to suggestions," I say, rolling over onto my back and staring up at ceiling. My eyes need to be anywhere but his face.

"I'm sure Castle is planning something stupid, too," Warner says, and it's the first time today I've heard any real emotion in his voice. Almost annoyed. Like he's been inconvenienced by the whole situation. "But even I have to admit it's probably going to be a much better plan than yours. _His _plan probably won't be a mass suicide."

Heat flushes through my chest and cheeks—I roll up onto my elbows, provoked.

So much for not looking at him.

"And still you haven't offered anything to this conversation but criticism! I've _told _you already. I can't go back to Castle! If we're going to kill Anderson _successfully_, I need to stay dead."

It didn't hurt when I said it this time. I was glad—happy that my both my body and heart had resigned itself to the complete destruction of the small, fragile life I'd managed to build myself in the months since I'd escaped from the insane asylum. Glad that I knew _exactly_ what the news would do to Adam—and to a lesser extent, James, Kenji and Castle.

To Adam, it would do exactly what "dying" did to me.

For the second time since I'd fallen in love with Adam Kent, I would once again set the dynamite off in his chest and make his heart explode; all in the name of doing all I possibly could do to protect him.

Exactly what monsters do.

"That is not such a bad idea," Warner replies in an even voice. His eyes are full of an expression I don't understand as he looks at me. "But beyond that, you have nothing that could be even construed as a decent strategy." It hasn't escaped my notice how he maintains a good deal of distance between us when he can. Right now he stands leaning casually against the door-frame of the small sitting room, watching me with a carefully blank expression. I hate, hate, _hate _that I can't stand him being so far away from me, that it makes me edgy like those fidgety people I used to see on the streets when I was little—all scratching and desperate in their withdrawal.

"I've agreed to help you," he continues and the tone of his voice makes me want punch something. "But I won't endorse a suicide mission, Juliette."

I didn't know whether it was the tone of his voice or his body language—it all just screamed and screamed bored at the top of its lungs—or whether it _was _that he was so far away all the time—but I snapped. I hadn't slept properly since I'd been shot—a combination of nightmares and guilt kept me up most of the night—and Warner's careful indifference was really starting play on all my insecurities about why people avoided me. And _that _was even _more _frustrating because I didn't want to care that he was avoiding me.

But I did.

And it hurt.

I deserved it.

I hated that too.

"Could you at least _pretend _to care about this for _one_ second, Warner! Just one!" I swing my feet over the side of the couch, needing to stand. "This is _important_. I _need _your help and so far you've proven to be good for nothing!"

I can feel a storm brewing in the room — feel the atmosphere, the air, becoming thick and hot and electric; feel the eerie calm building in my chest that tells me I'm about to lose my temper, my control.

Warner can feel it too. I can see it on his face — the way the boredom shatters from his expression and reforms as a strange mix of apprehension and laugher in his eyes.

So dangerous.

"That's a shame," he whispers in that quiet way of his and I feel myself slipping further. Like he knows he's the one holding my hand while I'm dangling from the edge of a cliff and I'm falling, falling, _falling…_

"I rather thought I was good for a few things, especially when it came to you." I hear rather than see him shift his weight from one foot to another. "For example"— step, step, step — "you're looking more alive, love, then you were three days ago."

His words to do something strange to my body — like Warner's reached inside me a pulled a plug loose, disconnecting everything from my brain.

He's just standing there, waiting and waiting — closer now, but still well out of reach — and I can't look at him.

"That's not what I was talking about and you know it," I say, feeling numb. Calm. Hot. "Or is it that you _enjoy _holding that over my head?"

It was the wrong thing to say and the _right _thing to say. So right because I want him to feel it —the anger, the hurt, the _frustration of it all. _I want to push him like he's pushing me — all kicking and screaming right off the edge.

"What?" The word hisses out from in-between his teeth like the bite of a whip against my skin. "You think that's why I did it? Why I saved you? To _hold it over your head _like some sort of_ sick **victory**_?" He's so angry now and it's enough for my eyes to meet his now and they're as glorious — furious — as I expected them to be; bright, hungry, emerald flames.

I want to feel triumphant, happy to have finally pushed him where he's pushed me — beyond caring. But his words are stopping me. They stop me feeling so much of what I _should_ feel for him. Anger is so easy — blind and unadulterated, we're both caught in its web now, I think.

"_**Tell me**_!" Warner demands, his whole body shaking, face twisting into something as horrible as it is beautiful — a marvelous defense.

Slipping, slipping, slipping…"You don't get to demand _anything _from me."

"No?" I see his lips form the word, the expression in his eyes making it a question.

My head moves — a brief shake — and he snarls, "then don't _demand_ it from me. I don't want your demands, your accusations, and your — your _pity_. If you think for one second I want a bar of whatever this is, you're more naïve then I gave you credit for." His voice breaks and I almost do, can feel the cracks working their way up my tenuous hold on reality.

Wrong, wrong, wrong…

Slipping, slipping, slipping…

He turns his back to me and I fall apart, shatter all over the ground.

The world is slipping too, shaking, falling around me — like it can't keep it together either — and all I can think is, this makes sense. This is exactly what I feel like on the inside — no longer anything but rubble and shaking and quaking and unsteady. That this — this chaos is all I'm capable of, all I create in people's lives. It's all I'm good for. Lamps, vases, tables smash across the floor and it's all I can do to slump to the ground.

"Juliette." The word, that sound, makes me focus — makes my head turn away from the ruin of the world and focus on its source. "You need to stop."

And there's _so much_ in his face all at once that I'm unable to read, I look away. A chunk of plasterboard comes loose from the roof and crashes behind him. "This accomplishes nothing."

I wait to feel something at the condescension in his words, but I don't. Some small, still-rational part of me agrees with him — I'm not being strong or brave or even _active — _being here, but the larger part of me that's still angry suffocates the rationality out of me before I can agree with Warner.

Instead, I just stare at him. Stare and stare without really wanting to say anything — or maybe I do? — and so I shouldn't have felt surprised that he _wasn't_ surprised when I look up at him and say, "I'm sorry."

"For what?" An automatic response.

For everything, I want say. For lying to you, I should say out loud. For lying to myself, most of all. For hurling lies at him like knives when he came to see me in my room that night. That I'm still so confused about what I'm doing — what I'm feeling, but I do want him and I know I shouldn't. I _know_. But all the knowing in the world doesn't seem to change what I want — what my body wants. And why won't this ache in my chest _go away so I can think_—

"What are you sorry for, Juliette?" He just standing there — too close, far too close and looking at me — really, really looking at me and I forget how to breathe. He reaches down for me — for my arm to pull me from the floor — and the instant his skin touches mine, everything stills.

He hoists me to my feet so we're standing chest to chest — as close as two human beings can be without touching — and releases me. I remember how to breathe again and wish that I hadn't —that somehow that part of my brain had shut up shop and moved away so that the scent rolling off his skin would stop reminding me of what it feels like to have his lips and his hands eating my skin.

"Why won't you answer me, love? You can't apologize and not say what it's for." He's speaking but his words are nothing more than a warm breath caressing my face.

I try to tell him, but I'm drowning in an ocean of words and it's too dark to see what any of them are. I'm no good with words — not with inspiring ones, or apologetic ones. Not even ones that are capable of making others happy. It was just like Warner said—I was only good at using demanding words — ones that make people angry and hurt.

Warner was _so good _at using words the right way…

Maybe that was one of the things that made him so dangerous.

And just when I thought that perhaps I'd somehow come up with a way to tell him everything I was thinking, I see his hands move and stretch and reach for my face and the words fade like a breeze on my tongue. He's doing it again—holding me like I'm made of glass. His touch is no more than a feather brushing my cheek.

Deep breath.

"Very well. Though I refuse to accept your apology until I know exactly what it's for, would you mind if I asked you a question instead?"

"No," and it's not even a word, just air.

I can feel his hands starting to shake, feel the spasms in his fingers as he runs them along my face. I'm waiting, waiting, waiting for him to ask, and the shine in his beautiful eyes tells me that whatever he wants to ask would make him vulnerable and he's struggling, really struggling to find the words to ask the question and I can see it — see that he's also drowning in an ocean of words he can't make out.

All at once his eyes harden and the shaking stops and he asks, "Do you still want my help?" and I know immediately that's not what he wanted to ask me — not at all — that they were the first words he could find to pull himself out of the water. Of course, I want to say. I need your help. Would surely die without it, but that's not what I say.

No.

Warner stands there unmoving just holding and holding me and I don't move either. And again, having never been able to handle words properly in my life, I don't say what's in my head. Instead I'm focusing on his face — on the rueful twist of his mouth and the pain and hope he's so obviously trying to hide behind his not-so-impenetrable mask — and I lift my bare hand up to cover one of his resting on my neck. He flinches and tries to withdraw it, but I tighten my grip around his knuckles so that he knows I don't want him to move. His hand is stiff, but it stays where it is.

I say rather shakily, "I never pity-pitied you. Not once." Deep breath, "I lie-lied about that. I'm so…I-I understand…" my voice dies, suddenly unsure of myself, but he's watching me intently, not moving or breathing. His hands have turned into a cage, keeping me trapped in his gaze, so I continue. "I-I under-stand what it's like to…what a life like yours is, because…because my-mine was the s-same."

His silence unnerves me, but his arms slacken and fall to his sides, breaking the spell that had compelled me to speak, so I turn my face away, feeling incredibly vulnerable and a little foolish.

I try to laugh and it sounds brittle and horrible. "You probably didn't want to hear that. Nothing you didn't know already. Sorry." I wait a moment to see if he'll say something — _please, please, please! Anything_! — and when he doesn't I stare blindly at the rubble behind him like it's the most fascinating thing in the world. "But to answer your question from earlier, y-yes. I-I do need your help. Thank you." My heart won't shut up and my throat feels like it full of cotton balls and butterflies and it's all I can do to keep myself from running for the door.

On second thought, I decide, leaving probably is the best idea. Just as I make a break for the door, Warner grabs my hand and spins me around to face him. His hands are on my back, pressing me against him in the next instant and his lips are grazing my face and I'm breathing in short, surprised gasps like a fish out of water and all I can smell is that unique scent that's so obviously him — all fresh soap and something sweet and hot — before he breathes, "Apology accepted." And he's kissing me with his sweet peppermint lips, so so so soft I think for a moment I'm imagining it, and just as I feel my fingers sink into the collar of his shirt he's setting me down on my unsteady feet and laughs — just laughs — the kind of bending over hey, that was hilarious laughter and my heads still spinning and I'm so confused and when I lick my lips I can still taste peppermint _and why can't I breathe_?

"What's so funny, Warner?"

"My father," he says, breathing hard and laughing at himself still. "Will be giving a speech to the masses in 2 weeks, in the local city square." His eyes find mine and all I can think is wow, I would crawl over broken glass for that smile and he finishes with, "that's our only chance — he'll be outside. Security will be tight, but if we don't kill him then, we never will."

"Good," is all I can manage to say.

What I feel is altogether another matter. My stomach quivers with the uneasiness of his easy suggestion for Anderson. Where had _that _particular solution been in the beginning?

* * *

**A/N: **Hello, fellow Shatter Me fanatics! I'm feeling a bit of a need to explain myself here about this "story". See, it's not a story. It's a series of quite dramatic scenes I'd written between either Juliette and Warner or Juliette, Warner and Adam, plus a few minor characters (those to come) in an _attempt _to write a story, which of course never came to fruition honestly because I'm too lazy and I really, really, really like Juliette and Warner together and I know that for most parts in the next book for various reasons, there won't be a whole lot of what happened in the infamous chapter 62 of Unravel Me happening in Ignite Me. Now, I could be wrong, but seeing as the last two books haven't set much of a precedent for that kind of thing, I'm not counting on it.

I don't know about you guys, but I really want to see what happens when Adam finds out Juliette's alive and has been spending the entire time he thought she was dead gallivanting about the city with Warner for however long it takes the three of them to all run into each other again. It's not that I dislike Adam, I just think that by now, it's pretty obvious that her and Adam's relationship is non-existent, so it's time we all stop pretending.

Anywho, that's it from me! Review if you want! Or don't. OH! If anyone is interested in Beta-reading, I'd be VERY happy for you to take everything I have and fix it for me. Not as big on editing as I used to be. Less time on a computer, the better! After work I've kinda had enough, so yeah. If someone reading this would like to be my Beta, that'd be so AWESOME!

Cherrio!

~Warui-Usagi~


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